Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Wild God
Release Date: Aug 30, 2024
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Play It Again Sam
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Album Review: Wild God by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Great, Based on 10 Critics
Based on rating 5
Constructed out of some of their most thrilling material in decades, this work is open, honest, raw, impassioned and vital In the Old Testament, we meet a character called Job. Job is a righteous man whose faith is tested through unimaginable suffering. Despite his friends’ attempts to help him through his misfortunes, Job questions the nature of divine justice but never waivers.
Based on rating 9/10
Over the last decade, Cave has published books, made soundtracks and albums, starred in films (mostly about himself, his family and his music) and suffered some truly harrowing tragedies. He has also found strength in writing partner and gloriously bearded multi-instrumentalist supreme Warren Ellis, and has continued to work and tour tirelessly with his band, the Bad Seeds, who, on this recording, are Cave, Ellis, Thomas Wydler, Martyn Casey, Jim Sclavunos, George Vjestica and Carly Paradis. Colin Greenwood and Luis Almau also guest.
Based on rating 9/10
Joy isn't perhaps one of the words that most readily springs to mind when surveying the thematic landscape inhabited by Nick Cave's now considerably bulky back catalogue. There's the gore-splattered Southern gothic swampland of The Birthday Party and the earlier Bad Seeds albums, followed by the confessional balladeer of 1997's The Boatman's Call, the point where Cave turned his songwriterly gaze inwards. 2013's rejuvenating reinvention Push The Sky Away found both the narrative thrust of the songwriting and the signature Bad Seeds sound boldly deconstructed, leading to the ghostly minimalism of 2016's dejected, deliberately sketchy Skeleton Tree and the otherworldly ambient drift of 2019's wounded yet warily hopeful Ghosteen, both records inescapably and indelibly infused in grief and the most painful kind of loss following the tragic death of Cave's son.
Based on rating 4/5
After two albums characterised by atmospheric arrangements, droning synthesisers and meditations on grief and death, Wild God sees a return to the haunted-carnival-that-may-contain-explosives vibe of the 00s Bad Seeds output. The jaunty orchestral sounds of Song of the Lake give way to the more straightforward rock of the title track, reminiscent of Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! This isn't a mode Cave has operated in on record for a while, but his bombastic live shows are full of such moments. There's a sense that as the Bad Seeds' live show ambles towards legendary status that this is one of the first albums made with that aspect in mind.
Based on rating 7.5/10
Nick Cave's recent personal tragedies of loss, grief, and sorrow have been well documented and reflected in the music of the past few Bad Seeds albums--2016's Skeleton Tree and 2019's Ghosteen--as well as Carnage, the 2021 album cut with longtime corroborator Warren Ellis. Now it appears as though Cave has completed a lifework transformation from disdainful punker to blasphemous blues-rocker to masterful teller of sordid tales to grief-stricken impressionist and now to arbiter of faith and hope. But what does this mean for the music? Cave has always explored and twisted multiple musical genres into an original and unique creation with an eclectic shapeshifting sound that has endured through three decades, ultimately establishing himself as a genre of his own.
Based on rating 1/10
"I don't believe in an interventionist God…" is the iconic opening line to "Into My Arms”, one of the most recognizable songs in the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds discography, the first single off of 1997's The Boatman's Call. Cave is unafraid to add an unexpected take on God to the familiar "sex, drugs, and rock ‘ n’ roll" refrain. He has often spoken of the impact of the Bible's stories and imagery--particularly the figure of the suffering Christ--on his penchant for narrative in his songs.
Opinion: Absolutly essential
By now, everybody knows about the events that have defined Nick Cave's last decade; the double tragedy that has seen him lose two of his sons, Arthur in 2015 and Jethro in 2022. The two records he has made with the Bad Seeds in that time, 'Skeleton Tree' and 'Ghosteen', sought to work through the immensity of his grief not by pushing it away, but heading into it and surrounding himself with it; 'Ghosteen', especially, was a maelstrom of emotion, and along with it, perhaps his most handsome album to date. Anybody who saw This Much I Know to Be True, Andrew Dominik's chronicle of 'Carnage', Nick's 2021 collaboration with Warren Ellis, will know that the Australian is very happy to follow his nose creatively; the film opens with a scene that reveals that he has become a ceramicist in lockdown, crafting small sculptures of the devil.
Opinion: Fantastic
Each project Nick Cave undertakes begins with a blank slate. Starting from nothing, and with huge exertion of will, something - some remarkable thing - emerges. 2019's 'Ghosteen' was - even amongst a catalogue of splendour - an exceptionally special record, one whose viscous-thin atmosphere contained an almost unbearable fragility. A meditation on loss and perseverance, it split fans on its release, but has come to be regarded as a singular artefact by a unique group of musicians.
Opinion: Excellent
"I stepped into an avalanche / it covered up my soul": so ran the first line of the first album by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, From Her To Eternity, released 40 years ago. The vicious cover of one of Leonard Cohen's bleakest moments might be interpreted as the snarling resentment of the human soul livid that for eternal salvation he must kneel before God "grotesque and bare", and perhaps too God's rage that he had to send his son to earth to sort out the sinful humans he'd created. I recently read a disdainful comment that in Wild God, Nick Cave had finally made a Christian rock record.
Opinion: Excellent
Four decades into a career of evolving from gothic outsiders to revered heroes of epic gospel rock, Cave's remarkably fluid, forceful band has delivered another majestic thriller. Their first since Ghosteen is rich in the singer's blend of archness and romantic yearning, while his simpatico cohorts' dynamics throb and tingle. Frogs borrows the melody of Morning Dew (made famous by Tim Rose), and the title track's sly reference to Jubilee Street is world-class self-mythologising.
'Wild God'
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